“How lovely,” Tilda said admiringly, and then laughed when Hal gallantly turned her comment into a compliment, pretending to think she was referring to herself. She was indeed ravishing, he assured her solemnly, but it was not seemly for her to call attention to her own beauty. Better she wait modestly until others noticed it, as they undoubtedly would.
“You have not changed a whit,” she said, playfully and untruthfully, for nothing was as she’d remembered it. She’d last seen her father’s domains fifteen years ago, when she’d been sent off to wed the man known as Heinrich der Lowe-Henry the Lion. She’d been only eleven, twenty-seven years younger than her new husband, a man renowned for his courage, military prowess, temper, and lack of tact, but it was obvious to her brothers that there was genuine respect and affection between Heinrich and Tilda, and they were glad that she’d found contentment in Germany. They were still getting accustomed to the Tilda of today, for this poised young woman of twenty-six was very different from the fragile, shy sister who still flitted through their childhood memories of yesterday. They were surprised by how much she’d grown; she was almost tall enough to look Richard and Hal straight in the eye, noticeably taller than her husband, and the slender, sylphlike girl had ripened into a beauty, so much so that they felt uncomfortable taking notice of the voluptuous curves motherhood had given her.
Tilda found their new selves to be no less startling. Hal had been twelve when they’d last met, Richard ten, and Geoffrey nine, and she had to make a conscious effort to associate those boisterous boys with these worldly, grown men of twenty-seven, twenty-five, and twenty-four. But she’d expected that she’d find strangers in their skins. What she’d not expected was to find her father was a stranger, too.
She’d remembered him as a veritable whirlwind, remembered a hoarse, raspy voice that could shout down the heavens or purr intimately in her mother’s ear, remembered coppery curly hair and sunbursts of pure energy, a giant who towered above other mortal men, a force of nature as dazzling and daunting as heat lightning in a summer sky. What she found at Chinon was a man of forty-nine who was not aging well, a man not much taller than her husband, with too many grey hairs, a stiff leg that throbbed when the weather changed, and hooded eyes etched in wrinkles that no longer looked like laugh lines. Heinrich had cautioned her to tread with care, fearful that too many questions about her mother might jeopardize Henry’s favor, a risk they could not afford to take. But as she gazed into her father’s face, she’d realized that the story of his ruined marriage and betrayals was writ plain for all to see, and her heart ached for him, for the mother sequestered in England, and for the little girl she’d once been, the child secure in the innocent belief that their family was, and would always be, favored by God.
A burst of laughter drew their eyes toward the middle bailey of the castle, where Henry and Heinrich were walking in the gardens. They’d just been joined by Tilda’s three children-Richenza, Otto, and Heinrich-and five- year-old Otto was shrieking with delight as Henry swung him up into the air. The sight of her father taking such joy in his grandchildren brought a smile to Tilda’s face, but it was tinged with sadness, for they’d been forced to leave their third son behind in Brunswick; Lothair’s health was too frail for him to make the difficult journey from Saxony to Normandy. No matter how often Tilda told herself that she’d had no choice but to put the needs of her husband and other children before Lothair’s, she continued to have dreams in which her absent son cried out for her at night. The separation was even harder because he was only eight, and she did not know if the emperor would keep his word and permit them to return in three years. Lothair could grow up without her. That fear gave her even greater sympathy for her mother, who’d been made to disappear from her children’s lives as if by some malign spell, one cast by her own husband.
“Tell me the truth,” she said, blue eyes moving from face to face. “How is Maman truly faring in confinement?”
Her brothers exchanged glances, and Hal said, lowering his voice instinctively even though they were not within their father’s hearing, “Surely you talked to Papa about her. What did he tell you?”
“He insisted she was living in comfort and contentment, and then hastily changed the subject. He has spent more time discussing the French king’s expulsion of the Jews from his realm and telling me about the new outbreak of war in Jerusalem between King Baldwin and the Saracen prince Saladin than he has talking about Maman. And when I asked why she could not cross over to Normandy to be with us at his Christmas Court, I never did get an answer from him.”
“And you will not,” Richard said sharply, “for the man is impossible to pin down even with a forked stick. If there is any justice, he will come back in his next life as a snake or an eel.”
Hal looked at his brother with dislike he made no attempt to conceal. The three of them had agreed to put the best face upon their mother’s plight and to speak well of their father in Tilda’s hearing, not wanting to make her exile any harder than it already was. He should have known that Richard would not hold to the bargain. “Hopefully in your next life, you’ll come back as a mute!”
Richard’s eyes narrowed. “A pity you were not born a woman in this life, Little King of Lesser Land, for you seek only to please and to be admired by all. You’d have made a right fine whore.”
Tilda gasped. She did not understand why he’d called Hal “Little King of Lesser Land,” although she recognized it as a grave insult. Geoffrey did understand and bit back a grin; Richard was quoting from a song by the troubadour Bertran de Born, who’d mocked Hal for not displaying more martial fervor.
Hal flushed, but he lashed back at once, saying with all the contempt at his command, “And a pity you were not lowborn in this life, that the blood of kings keeps you from following your heart’s desire. You are never happier than when you are up to your knees in blood and guts and gore. Clearly the Almighty meant you to be a butcher.”
Hal knew his retort had missed its mark as soon as the words left his mouth, even before Richard laughed at him. “When men fight, they bleed and sometimes they die, for war is not as pretty or fanciful as your tourney games. War is real, so little wonder you like it not.”
“Rot in Hell!” Hal spat, but Geoffrey decided to intercede before things got totally out of hand, and interrupted Hal in mid-curse.
“We’re attracting an audience,” he warned, nodding toward the bailey below, and the others saw that he was right. As their voices had risen, men were beginning to look upward, including Henry and Heinrich. When her husband beckoned to her, Tilda was only too happy to comply, for she’d been shaken by what she’d just witnessed. Geoffrey escorted her down to the gardens, but she could not forget that ugly scene up on the battlements and came to a sudden stop while her husband and Henry were still out of earshot.
“They sounded as if they hate each other, Geoffrey. How did it ever get to this?”
“Blame the Demon Countess of Anjou,” he said flippantly. “If we’re the Devil’s spawn as our enemies claim, we are only being true to our nature. But it is not only Hal and Richard, sweeting. If I were drowning, Brother Richard would throw me a lifeline with an anchor attached to it, and in all honesty, I’d do as much for him.”
Tilda stared at him. She did not know this man, did not know any of them. What had happened to her family? And standing there in the warm, sunlit bailey, she shivered, suddenly sorry that she’d ever come home.
That Autumn Hal made another demand for territory of his own, insisting that Henry give him Normandy. When Henry refused, Hal withdrew to Paris in a rage and announced he was taking the cross and going to the Holy Land to fight the infidels. Henry entreated him in vain to reconsider. He did not agree to return to his father’s court until Henry promised to increase his allowance to a generous one hundred Angevin pounds a day with an additional ten pounds a day for Marguerite and to pay for the cost of maintaining one hundred knights in Hal’s household for a year.
Henry had decided to hold his Christmas Court that year at Caen and spared no expense to make it a memorable occasion-as an official welcome for his daughter and her husband and proof that the tattered family loyalty of the Angevins was once more intact and flying high. Heinrich had gone on pilgrimage to the Spanish shrine of Santiago de Compostela while Tilda remained in her father’s care, but he returned in time for the December festivities. So did Hal and Marguerite. Only John and Eleanor were absent, both of them left behind in England.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
December 1182
Caen, Normandy
An icy rain had been assailing the riverside city of Caen since midday, but the king’s solar that evening was a
